COLLABORATE 13 Keynote by Mark Hurd, Oracle President
Today, I’m in an April snowstorm in Denver, at the COLLABORATE 13 conference, sponsored by the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG). Oracle’s president, Mark Hurd, is about to address the crowd.
Keynote by Aron Ralston at COLLABORATE 13 Conference
I arrived in Denver yesterday for COLLABORATE 13, the annual conference of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG).
MDM Track’s Call for Papers at COLLABORATE 2013
For about seven years now, I’ve volunteered on the Education Committee of the Oracle Application Users Group. The COLLABORATE 13 Call for Presentations is closing this Friday, October 12, 2012.
MDM Track’s Call for Papers at COLLABORATE 2013
For about seven years now, I’ve volunteered on the Education Committee of the Oracle Application Users Group, an independent users group. The COLLABORATE 13 Call for Presentations will be open until October 12, 2012.
OAUG COLLABORATE 12 Keynote Speakers
I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday for COLLABORATE 12, the annual conference of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG).
Final Deadline for the MDM Track at COLLABORATE 2012
The final deadline for the COLLABORATE 2012 conference Call for Papers is TODAY - Monday, October 17.
The MDM Track at COLLABORATE 2012
The deadline for the Call for Papers for the 2012 COLLABORATE conference is coming up fast – Friday, October 14.
Call for Papers for MDM Track at COLLABORATE 2012
by Dan Power
I’m still a volunteer on the Education Committee of the Oracle Application Users Group, which is a robust users group that is completely independent of Oracle Corporation. I’ve been involved in the group as a whole for over 15 years now, and have been on the Education Committee for more than five years. Read more 
Oracle 2011 MDM Strategy and Roadmap
This session at COLLABORATE 2011 was presented by Manoj Tahiliani, Senior Director of MDM Product Management & Strategy at Oracle. Read more
The Strategic Nature of MDM According to Oracle
This week, I attended David Butler’s presentation at the Oracle Applications Users Group COLLABORATE 11 conference in Orlando, FL. Read more
COLLABORATE 11′s MDM Track
I arrived in Orlando, FL this morning for COLLABORATE 11, the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) conference. This year, the Master Data Management (MDM) track looks outstanding. Read more
The MDM Track at OAUG COLLABORATE 11
I’ve been a volunteer member of the Education Committee of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) for several years now, serving as the “track manager” for Master Data Management (MDM). Read more
Hub Designs Blog’s Top 10 for 2010
Inspired by Crysta Anderson from Initiate, who put together IBM’s Mastering Data Management blog Top 10 Posts of 2010, I decided to put together a similar “Top Ten Posts of 2010″ for the Hub Designs Blog.
In our holiday greetings article, Thank You To Our Readers, we covered some of the top articles from the beginning of this blog in July 2007, and included some readership statistics, which we won’t bore you with today.
Our reports on MDM vendors like Oracle, IBM Initiate, Informatica (formerly Siperian), Kalido, and Orchestra Networks were very popular in 2010. And our series on MDM best practices, practicing enterprise architecture within MDM (by Jim Parnitzke) and on data profiling (by Rob DuMoulin) were also big hits.
Without further ado, here’s the Hub Designs Blog “Top 10 for 2010″.
- Oracle’s MDM Strategy and Roadmap – A look at Oracle’s MDM strategy and roadmap, from the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) COLLABORATE conference in April 2010.
- Building MDM-Powered Solutions with Initiate Composer – A description of Initiate’s new Composer product, which is a framework for building solutions on top of IBM’s Initiate Master Data Service hub.
- Master Data Management Best Practice Series, by Dan Power – A ten part series on MDM and data governance best practices, based on my presentation at Oracle OpenWorld 2010.
- Modeling the MDM Blueprint, by James Parnitzke – A six part series on applying important enterprise architecture concepts to MDM projects.
- Data Profiling For All The Right Reasons, by Rob DuMoulin – A five part series on data profiling and its role within MDM and data governance initiatives.
- Siperian Acquired By Informatica – My analysis of Siperian’s acquisition by Informatica, written on the day the news broke.
- Informatica Analyst Briefing – Hub Designs is regularly briefed by the major MDM vendors; this one by Informatica was about 2 months after the acquisition. A later briefing from October 2010 can be found here.
- Kalido MDM and AB InBev – I live blogged this at the Gartner MDM Summit during a session by Kalido’s President and CEO Bill Hewitt and Jonathan Starkey, the Director of Business Intelligence at AB InBev North America.
- Intersection of MDM, CRM and ERP – My article on Why Product Information Management in Information Management magazine sparked a short blog article by Andrew White of Gartner. The “Intersection of MDM, CRM and ERP” article is in response to Andrew’s.
- Orchestra Networks Enters Gartner Magic Quadrant – We thought it was newsworthy that Orchestra Networks, a specialized MDM vendor, was included in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management of Product Data” for the first time. Also, Orchestra Networks sponsored a white paper titled A Real Multidomain MDM Solution or a Wannabe? by Hub Designs that was published in September.
It’s been a busy 2010. I recently read the 2009 Year in Review from this time last year, and was exhausted just reading it, but this year has been the same – several conferences (Gartner MDM Summit, OAUG COLLABORATE, Oracle OpenWorld, Kalido), webinars (with eLearning Curve, TechTarget and Oracle Applications Users Group) and some exciting things to look forward to and update you on in 2011.
I’d like to to thank my wife and two boys for their unwavering support throughout 2010 – and my heartfelt thanks to the folks on the Hub Designs team - I couldn’t do it without you!
And thank you – as always – for your readership and support. Happy New Year!
Master Data Management Best Practice #1 – Start with the Need, Pain or Problem (Not “The Solution”)
The topic of “best practices in MDM and data governance” is one that I’ve been writing and speaking about for several years.
I wrote an earlier article on this in October 2007, and it’s proven to be one of the most popular articles on this blog, with more than 4,500 views to date. I’ve spoken on this topic several times at the Oracle Applications Users Group COLLABORATE conference, and at Oracle OpenWorld in 2009 and 2010.
My thoughts on MDM and data governance best practices have changed a bit over the years. At the recent Oracle OpenWorld conference, I co-presented with a couple of great people from Oracle, so I only had about 30 minutes, which forced me to focus and be more concise.
For those of you who couldn’t get to San Francisco for OpenWorld, I’m going to do a series here on this blog, looking at my recent Oracle OpenWorld presentation one best practice at a time.
MDM Best Practice #1 – Start with the Need, Pain or Problem (Not “The Solution”) – the “build it and they will come” approach really doesn’t work for MDM. I had one client where the IT group built a working customer hub, but couldn’t get the business interested in adopting it, and as a result, couldn’t get the funding to continue project beyond Year 1.
To avoid their mistake, make sure MDM solves some key business problems. Find out what your company’s overall corporate strategy is, and figure out how to tie MDM to delivering on that corporate strategy.
In particular, look at the data-related components of your planned and in-flight projects, then see how a centralized data hub can save money. I had one client where the “data components” of their ten planned and in-flight projects totaled about $10 million, and they calculated that by implementing a customer hub, they could achieve those same business goals for $6 million. After their implementation, which lasted 12 months, their actual costs were only $4 million. So they delivered savings of $6 million vs. the data-related costs embedded in the ten separate projects.
This may sound like an IT-driven initiative, but saving $6 million while still achieving the same business goals was a win-win that made the business team and the IT team look good.
Please let us know – in the comments here or in the forums on the MDM Community – what you think of business-driven rather than IT-driven MDM and data governance initiatives.
The next article in the series is: MDM Best Practice #2 – Active, Involved Executive Sponsorship
Call for Papers for MDM Track at OAUG COLLABORATE 2011
I’ve been involved in the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) since 1995, and have been a member of the OAUG Education Committee for several years now. The Education Committee is starting to plan next April’s COLLABORATE 11 Conference, and I’m managing the “Master Data Management” track.
Together with the Special Interest Group (SIG) coordinators for the Customer Data Management SIG and the Oracle Enterprise Product Lifecycle Management SIG, we invite YOU to submit a paper for the 2011 conference’s MDM track.
Our vision for the MDM track at COLLABORATE 11 is to have:
- a good mix of beginner, intermediate and advanced topics,
- presented by a range of well known and first time presenters,
- covering master data management, data governance and data quality,
- including domains such as customer, product, supplier and site,
- discussing Oracle products such as Oracle Customer Hub, Oracle Product Hub, Oracle Supplier Hub, Oracle Site Hub, Oracle MDM Data Quality, Oracle Higher Education Constituent Hub, Hyperion Data Relationship Management, and Oracle Fusion MDM.
Here are the important facts from the OAUG Call for Papers:
You’ll have the opportunity to connect with more than 5,000 users, technology leaders, Oracle executives and solution innovators gathering for the user-driven education and networking event April 10 – 14, 2011 at the Orange County Convention Center West in Orlando, Florida. Proposals are now being accepted. The deadline is Friday, October 1, 2010 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. To submit a paper, go to http://collaborate.oaug.org/submit/. For more information, you can go to http://collaborate.oaug.org/presenterinfo/.
Note to Oracle Employees: All Oracle employees interested in speaking at COLLABORATE 11 are to submit your papers through the Call for Papers submission form. Please contact speakerprograms@oaug.com for assistance with technical difficulties. For all other inquiries, please contact Lisa Stuart at lisa.stuart@oracle.com.
Oracle’s MDM Strategy and Roadmap
At the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) COLLABORATE 2010 conference this week, I attended a session by Pascal Laik, Oracle’s VP of Master Data Management Strategy.
He started out by talking about several Oracle MDM customers, their success stories and their return on investment, across drivers like growth, efficiency, improved IT agility, and compliance.
Pascal moved on to talk about MDM implementation challenges. Oracle surveys its MDM customers every two years. Measuring actual ROI achieved is the most difficult challenge reported. Next is breaking down organizational silos, and then demonstrating incremental business value.
Five out of the top ten challenges were related to data governance and project/organization. These were big themes two years ago as well. So Oracle worked with an outside partner on the areas of strategy, policies & processes, organization, measurement & monitoring, technology, and communication. They got a group of 10-15 customers together 2-3 times per year, and that group put together a set of requirements for a product that Oracle has now created called Data Governance Manager. This product helps data governance professionals to operate and monitor the hub and to define and enforce policies.
Pascal showed a short video from an Oracle customer, Areva. Their program was called STOCK – Strategic and Operational Customer Knowledge, to ensure the high quality of customer data. They used a five step approach: Collect, Harmonize, Merge, Enrich, and Publish. The benefits included saving employees time, ensuring that internal people can rely on customer and prospect data, and providing the entire enterprise with a clear vision of the customer database.
The second set of challenges related to ROI and business case – measuring actual ROI achieved. Oracle now has a web-based ROI model available through its sales team. Oracle also has a group of people that do a 3-5 week management consulting exercise called “Insight” that delivers a full business case.
The third set of challenges is the first one involving technical issues: #10 and #11 (integration and data quality).
Two years ago, the #1 issue was procuring skilled resources. So Oracle has been working closely with systems integrators, so now this issue is down to #7. Integration with operational applications has gone from #2 to #11.
Lastly, Pascal discussed Oracle solutions, investments and its strategy going forward. Oracle now has Customer Hub, Supplier Hub, Product Hub, and Site Hub. Data Relationship Management, which is a financial hub to manage financial entities such as the chart of accounts and other hierarchies, is also an analytical hub.
Oracle Customer Hub (formerly known as Universal Customer Master) is now on release 8.2, which shipped in January 2010, and includes the new Data Governance Manager module. This is the largest customer release in four years.
Oracle’s MDM strategy has two legs – embedded “best in class”. Oracle has OEM’d the Informatica solution, using the Identity Systems solution (now owned by Informatica) and the Address Doctor solution (also from Informatica) for postal cleansing for 200+ countries. The other leg is “open” – Oracle is providing a “Universal DQ Connector” for selected vendors like Trillium, Acxiom, D&B and Datanomic. (Note: the embedded “best in class” approach is somewhat controversial, since Informatica is now competing directly with Oracle, since it has acquired the Siperian MDM hub).
The end-to-end data quality framework (the Data Quality “Machine”) has a Rules Manager for design, development and validation (IDQ). There is a process (Analyze/Profile, Standardize/Cleanse, Match & De-Duplicate, Enrich) with a Scorecard & Reporting, and an Exception Management Process. The output is to load the MDM system with zero rejects.
Oracle has also acquired Silver Creek Systems, which is focused on product data quality. It is a self-learning semantic engine to handle the complexities of product information.
Pascal talked about some of the newer MDM hubs, Supplier Hub and Site Hub. Site Hub in particular has experienced strong interest from retailers, fast food companies and large enterprises, which are using it to manage stores and locations.
Oracle’s MDM investments are critical for Oracle in terms of its differentiation strategy, and data governance is the number one item from its customer advisory board. Oracle has reached 1,000 MDM customers across all of its various MDM products.
Pascal wrapped up by talking about how competitive the MDM space is and the recent acquisitions in the market. Oracle’s history is in applications. Oracle brings a pre-built, flexible schema with enterprise-grade, verticalized hub applications. Oracle MDM hubs are pre-integrated with both Oracle and non-Oracle applications. And Oracle provides best-in-class data quality and data governance solutions.
2009 Year in Review
As we’re about to enter 2010, it’s a good time to reflect on what happened in 2009 and what it all means.
“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…” So Dickens begins “A Tale of Two Cities”, but it’s also a good description of the past year.
The first half of the year was one of the most challenging I’ve faced in my twenty-three year career in business and technology. The second half of 2009 was better – not without its speed bumps but every month was a little better than the one before it.
The macro-economic climate has been tumultuous at best. But the second half of the year showed enough improvement that Hub Designs’ revenue for the year was up 33%. Not bad for a two and a half year old company during the worst economic conditions in 80 years …
Marketing and Thought Leadership
We launched a new web site in January, and it’s been well received. Total visits to www.hubdesigns.com were up 14% over 2008.
A little later in the year, we updated the “look and feel” of the Hub Designs Blog, branding it as the “world’s fastest growing blog covering master data management and data governance”. We’ve gotten more than 43,000 hits since we started writing in July 2007, and our readership more than doubled in 2009, to about 27,000 hits per year.
We published six issues of our “Best Practices in Master Data Management” newsletter this year. We publish the newsletter about six times a year to roughly 3,300 subscribers.
I wrote six articles for Information Management magazine, including some popular ones on “Product Information Management Challenges”, how to build a business case for master data management, and how to select the right MDM vendor for your organization. I also wrote for Identity Resolution Daily, on “The Growing Role of Identity Resolution in MDM” and “Matching – MDM’s Secret Sauce”.
With our partner Siperian, we wrote a white paper in August called “When Data Governance Turns Bureaucratic: How Data Governance Police Can Constrain the Value of Your MDM Initiative” that has generated quite a bit of discussion. You can download a copy of it here.
A second white paper, called “Best Practices for Leveraging D&B in Oracle E-Business Suite”, was written in partnership with Dun & Bradstreet. It describes using D&B information to drive better supply chain performance for companies using Oracle E-Business Suite. You can download it here.
I volunteer for the Education Committee of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG). A big part of that effort lies in programming the MDM track for the annual conference. This year, it was in Orlando in May, and I really enjoyed speaking there and seeing people from the Oracle community that I don’t see very often. Here’s a link to my OAUG presentation.
We participated in conference calls with Oracle Development during the year, and ultimately attended the Oracle Fusion “Hands-On Validation & Testing” session for Customer MDM at Oracle headquarters in August. It was a great chance to get some early insights into Oracle’s next major product release and to see the progress Oracle has made in building out its Fusion MDM vision, which is striking in its powerful hub technology and its elegant & productive user interface.
In 2008, we attended the Gartner MDM Summit to decide whether to exhibit there in 2009. We were impressed enough with the conference that we did exhibit in 2009, in October in Los Angeles. We had a positive experience, so we’ll be a Silver level sponsor in April 2010 in Las Vegas. Since we specialize in MDM and data governance, we find the association with Gartner’s MDM event a powerful one.
I didn’t attend Oracle OpenWorld for the past couple of years, but this year I was glad I did. It was like “old home week”, seeing people from Oracle itself and from the broader Oracle community that I’ve met over the past 15 years. David Butler, Senior Director of MDM Marketing at Oracle, posted my presentation on Oracle’s web site, and said “you were our cleanup hitter and you hit a home run with the bases loaded”.
We also did webinars with our partners Siperian and Initiate Systems. The Siperian webinar covered the differences between MDM platforms like Siperian and ERP platforms like SAP from a master data perspective. The Initiate webinar, with Initiate’s CTO Marty Moseley, discussed developing strong MDM business case, deploying core MDM technologies and lessons learned on the “build vs. buy” question.
Social Networking
After experimenting with social networking in 2008, this year we had a coordinated strategy to use the Hub Designs Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to communicate & collaborate with our clients, potential clients, team members, partners, suppliers, etc.
It’s a pretty simple strategy. Short updates (140 characters or less) go out on Twitter, and are re-published on both LinkedIn and Facebook. Longer updates (i.e. blog articles) are published on the Hub Designs Blog. We encourage responses and feedback using @replies on Twitter and comments on LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as longer-form comments on the blog. And we get them – almost every blog article gets at least one comment, sometimes as many as a dozen.
When a new blog article comes out, we notify everyone via a single update on Twitter. What’s amazing is that during 2009, social networking now drives about 15% of the Hub Designs Blog’s total traffic. And one of our clients gave us some good feedback that our social networking activities help her stay current on what we’re up to, and help her feel connected to us as a company.
Another social networking experiment that developed further in 2009 was the MDM Community. We started this using Ning (a “social network in a box”) in November 2008, out of frustration with LinkedIn’s “Group” functionality. It now has more than 210 members, from 23 different countries. It’s still a work in progress, but if you’re interested in master data management or data governance, you should check it out at http://mdmcommunity.ning.com. It’s becoming an international “who’s who” of the MDM world.
Summary of Client Projects
In case you think the Hub Designs team has been doing nothing but marketing, writing white papers and magazine articles, speaking at conferences, and volunteering for user groups, here’s a summary of our 2009 client projects:
- Technology provider for vehicle dealers: integration of Oracle E-Business Suite with D&B data
- Payroll services company: integration of Oracle E-Business Suite with external credit information
- Information services company: technical support for customers using Oracle E-Business Suite
- Legal information services company: readiness assessment and product MDM strategy & design
- Simulation and engineering software company: advisor to data governance board
- Manufacturer of oil and gas equipment: integration of Oracle E-Business Suite R12 with D&B
- Software company: built connector between Oracle AR and D&B’s DNBi risk management solution
- Technology company: customer MDM strategy workshop
Out With The Old, In With The New
This past year has been a lot of fun, but it has also been somewhat exhausting. So I’m looking forward to a bit more deliberate pace in 2010.
We’re very excited about the coming year at Hub Designs. We’ve got some great projects underway and in the pipeline, and we’ll be continuing to grow and expand to meet our clients’ needs and market demands.
In closing, I’d like to say how grateful I am to my family, for their patience with my traveling so much and for their unconditional love.
MDM Track at the OAUG Conference
The Oracle Applications Users Group conference, COLLABORATE 10, is being held April 18-22, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
But the Master Data Management (MDM) track of COLLABORATE 10 needs YOUR help!
This is your final invitation to share your MDM and Data Governance success story, knowledge and expertise by presenting at the conference.
The MDM Track’s call for papers has been extended to 11:59 pm EDT on Monday, October 26; this deadline will not be extended further.
More than 5,000 users, technology leaders, Oracle executives and solution innovators will gather for the event April 18-22, 2010, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.
We hope we’ll see you there — as a speaker!
If you’re interested in presenting, all you need at this point is a title, a short abstract of 520 characters summarizing your idea, and up to five “bullet point” objectives.
If you’d like to submit a paper, just send an e-mail to info (at) hubdesigns (dot) com, giving me a brief sketch of your idea. I’ll respond with the URL you’ll need to submit it.
Looking for MDM Papers for OAUG COLLABORATE 2010
As I’ve written in the past, Hub Designs is a corporate member of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), and your trusty author, Dan Power, is the OAUG Education Committee’s track manager for Master Data Management.
Believe it or not, we’ve already started planning the May 2010 conference. So we’re looking for good papers on Oracle’s current MDM products: Oracle Customer Hub, Oracle Product Hub, Oracle Site Hub, and Hyperion Data Relationship Management.
This will be the second year where we will be combining the Customer MDM and Product MDM threads in a single Master Data Management track. Feedback on this was very good at last year’s conference.
Here’s the scoop from the OAUG on the Call for Papers:
Share Your Knowledge at COLLABORATE 10!
Proposals are due by Tuesday, October 20.
You are invited to submit a presentation proposal and share your approach to Oracle Applications in an education session at the premier annual conference for Oracle customers — COLLABORATE 10: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community, presented by IOUG, OAUG and Quest. More than 5,000 users, technology leaders, Oracle executives and solution innovators will gather for the premiere user-driven education and networking event April 18-22, 2010 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
If you are an Oracle Applications professional with an interest in Oracle Fusion, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Agile, Hyperion, Oracle Communications and Siebel product families, as well as applications technology, please submit through the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG). Proposals are now being accepted. The deadline is Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. EDT.
As a selected presenter, you’ll have the chance to:
- Share your best practices and tested solutions for Oracle technologies and applications
- Enhance your own knowledge through new conversations with your peers
- Attend a full week of education sessions to learn from other Oracle users, experts and leaders
Get more information about presenting at COLLABORATE 10, including tracks, specific industry- or product-related areas of emphasis, presenter requirements and the presentation submission and selection processes.
Submit your proposal through the OAUG
Note These Important Presentation Submission Dates and Deadlines
- October 20, 2009, 11:59 p.m. EDT: Presentation abstracts due.
- December 2009: Accepted presenters notified by the OAUG.
- January 21, 2010: Acceptance of the compliance agreement due.
- March 9, 2010: All presentation materials including white paper and presentation slides are due.
- April 18 – 22, 2010: We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas!
IOUG, OAUG and Quest strive to provide top-quality content at COLLABORATE, emphasizing user-driven education sessions that truly benefit attendees and their organizations. We will monitor sessions and feedback from attendees to ensure education sessions are not focused on a sales-centered topic. Presenters in violation will be noted and may be prevented from speaking at future COLLABORATE conferences. This does not apply to any purchased vendor activities, which are clearly communicated to attendees as sponsored events.
Attention Team Oracle! All Oracle employees interested in speaking at COLLABORATE 10 are to contact Lisa Stuart at lisa.stuart@oracle.com prior to submitting papers through the official COLLABORATE 10 call for papers engine.
| Connect with COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum on Twitter for conference news, reminders and networking. Use hashtag #C10. |
OAUG COLLABORATE 09
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The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) COLLABORATE 09 conference has wrapped up, and this year was a good one.
Attendance was down overall, from about 7,500 people last year to roughly 4,500 this year (caution, these are unofficial “word of mouth” numbers). But given the gloomy economic picture over the last 6-8 months, I was just happy the conference wasn’t canceled altogether. And I noticed that the people who were there were more engaged. These are the folks who had to fight to attend, so once they got there, they were more focused on getting the most out of it.
On the Master Data Management front, we had a great roster of presentations this year.
I particularly enjoyed Bob Barnett on “Design Guidelines for Oracle PIM MDM Processes”, Shyam Kadigari on “Oracle Customers Online Implementation”, Mani Kumar Manda on “Golden Rules to Tame the MDM Beast” and William McKnight on “Top 10 Mistakes Companies make in forming Enterprise Data Governance”.
I thought Pascal Laik, VP of MDM Product Strategy at Oracle, did a great job on “Rapid ROI with Oracle Master Data Management”. He did a demo of the ROI Analysis tool that Oracle has created, which looked very comprehensive and should save MDM teams a lot of time. Oracle customers can get access to this through their Oracle sales team.
There were a couple of presentations I was looking forward to but had to miss, including Bill Swanton from AMR Research on “Master Data Management for ERP Suites – It’s Different” and Brent Zionic from Sun Microsystems on “The Lunatic, the Lover & the Poet – Beyond Imagining Data Management”. Word of mouth feedback on these presentations was very good.
The OAUG is planning to offer a number of eLearning webinars over the rest of 2009, so we’re inviting all of the presenters (and anyone else interested in doing an eLearning session) to submit their ideas at http://secure.meetingexpectations.com/oaug/elearning/elSubmission.aspx.
I’ve been a member of the OAUG’s Education Committee for several years, and with the aid of the OAUG Special Interest Group (SIG) coordinators for Customer Data Management and Product Lifecycle Management / PIM, I’ve been planning the MDM track at each year’s conference. So if you’re interested in presenting at a future OAUG COLLABORATE conference, please sign up for Hub Designs’ newsletter, so I can keep you posted on the next Call for Papers.
Heading to OAUG
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I’m heading to Orlando, FL this Sunday to attend and speak at the annual Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) conference.
I’m a volunteer member of the OAUG Education Committee, managing the Master Data Management track. As such, I get to work closely with the Special Interest Group coordinators, and have a lot of fun planning the the MDM part of the conference.
This year, I’m very interested in hearing what all of our great MDM track speakers will have to say, and catching some of the Oracle executive presentations on their progress towards the Fusion applications suite.
As you might expect, I’m particularly interested in the Fusion MDM Hub, and Pascal Laik from Oracle will be doing a session on that.
I’ll try to write a few “dispatches from the front lines” here during the conference to share my thoughts on the various sessions.
Hope to see you in Orlando!
Keynote at Oracle BI SIG Conference
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The Oracle Business Intelligence Special Interest Group, which is part of the Oracle Applications User Group, is hosting Desktop Conference 2008, its annual online conference, in mid-November.
Here’s a brief description:
“Join the Oracle Business Intelligence community in the only global, online business intelligence conference that addresses business intelligence and data warehousing topics related to the Oracle technology stack.”
The SIG president, Faun deHenry of FMT Systems, asked me to do one of the keynote sessions.
It’s titled “Master Data Management 101″ and will be covering:
- what is Master Data Management (MDM)?
- some useful MDM and Data Governance best practices
- what works and what doesn’t
- importance of a holistic approach to MDM
- how to get the political aspects right
- the relationship between MDM and Business Intelligence
The session will be held online on Wed. November 12th at 2:45 pm Eastern, 11:45 am Pacific. Click here to see the agenda and here to register.
Share Your Knowledge at OAUG COLLABORATE 09
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Hub Solution Designs is a member of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), and I’m the OAUG Education Committee’s track manager for Master Data Management.
We’ve started planning next May’s conference, and we’re looking for strong papers on Oracle Customer Hub, Oracle Product Hub, and Hyperion Data Relationship Management.
Here’s the latest reminder from OAUG on the Call for Papers, which ends October 31st.
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Share Your Knowledge at COLLABORATE 09!
The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) and Quest International Users Group (Quest) invite you to share your Oracle knowledge at the premier annual conference for Oracle customers — COLLABORATE 09: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community, taking place May 3-7, 2009, Orange County Convention Center West, Orlando, Florida.
Submit a presentation proposal by Friday, October 31 to be considered to speak at this leading user-driven event and have the chance to:
- Share best practices and tested solutions for Oracle technologies and applications.
- Enhance your own Oracle knowledge through the peer networking and exchange.
- Learn from Oracle experts and leaders through other education sessions.
If you are an Oracle Applications professional with an interest in Oracle E-Business Suite, Hyperion, Agile, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Oracle Retail, Communications Billing and Revenue Management and MetaSolv Software, as well as applications technology, we invite your proposals for the COLLABORATE 09 — OAUG Forum.
For more specific information about COLLABORATE 09 — OAUG Forum, including tracks, specific industry- or product-related areas of emphasis, presenter requirements and the presentation submission process, please refer to the call for presentations on the COLLABORATE 09 OAUG conference Web site.
Attention Team Oracle! All Oracle employees interested in speaking at COLLABORATE 09 are to contact Michael Neuendorff at michael.neuendorff@oracle.com. Do not submit papers through the official COLLABORATE 09 call for papers!
We look forward to seeing you in Orlando!
Important Paper Submission Dates and Deadlines
- October 31, 2008, 11:59 p.m. EDT: Presentation abstracts due.
- January 12, 2009: Accepted presenters notified by the OAUG.
- January 23, 2009: Acceptance of the compliance agreement due.
- March 8, 2009: All presentation materials including white paper and presentations are due.
Call for Papers for Next Oracle Applications User Group Conference
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It’s that time of year again! As a member of the Education Committee for the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), I’m helping to plan next May’s COLLABORATE 09 Conference. As you might expect, I’m managing the “Master Data Management” track.
Here’s the announcement for the Call for Papers, which ends on October 31, 2008. Please follow the instructions below to submit your Master Data Management paper idea.
Share Your Knowledge at COLLABORATE 09!
May 3-7, 2009; Orange County Convention Center West, Orlando, FL; http://oaug.collaborate09.com/
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) invite you to share your Oracle knowledge at the premier annual conference for Oracle customers — COLLABORATE 09: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community, taking place May 3-7, 2009, Orange County Convention Center West, Orlando, FL.
Submit a presentation proposal by Friday, October 31 to be considered to speak at this leading user-driven event and have the chance to:
• Share best practices and tested solutions for Oracle technologies and applications.
• Enhance your own Oracle knowledge through the peer networking and exchange.
• Learn from Oracle experts and leaders through other education sessions.
If you are an Oracle Applications professional with an interest in Oracle E-Business Suite, Hyperion, Agile, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Oracle Retail, Communications Billing and Revenue Management and MetaSolv Software, as well as applications technology, we invite your proposals for the COLLABORATE 09 — OAUG Forum.
For more specific information about COLLABORATE 09 — OAUG Forum, including tracks, specific industry- or product-related areas of emphasis, presenter requirements and the presentation submission process, please refer to the call for presentations on the COLLABORATE 09 OAUG conference Web site.
Attention Team Oracle! All Oracle employees interested in speaking at COLLABORATE 09 are to contact Michael Neuendorff at michael.neuendorff@oracle.com. Do not submit papers through the official COLLABORATE 09 call for papers!
We look forward to seeing you in Orlando!
Important Dates and Deadlines
* October 31, 2008, 11:59 p.m. EDT: Presentation abstracts due.
* January 12, 2009: Accepted presenters notified by the OAUG.
* March 8, 2009: All presentation materials including white paper and presentations are due.
OAUG Collaborate 08 Presentation
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TechTarget recently had an article that quoted heavily from my presentation at the recent Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) conference, COLLABORATE 08.
The article discusses the Master Data Management program at Tektronix, Inc. and segues into an overview of MDM based on my presentation at the conference.
Here’s the full link:
http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid41_gci1312492,00.html
Please let us know what you think of the article by commenting.
Our First Six Months
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Hub Solution Designs, Inc. was incorporated in September 2007. At this point in our history, I thought I’d spend a few minutes reflecting on what we’ve done so far and where we’re headed.
Clients: we’ve been lucky to get off to a strong start here and have formed some great relationships. We take confidentiality seriously, but you can get a sense for the relationships in our article A Good Client Site Visit. One client said they’ve “made huge strides toward our MDM vision, and you’ve helped us work through the areas that were broken”.
Team: another area where we’ve been very fortunate. We have a strong group of experienced MDM practitioners: Tim O’Sullivan, Gaurav Arora, Eric Gustafson, and Maureen Butler. I believe that with a great team, anything is possible – and we’re very lucky to have assembled this team in the first six months or so.
Partners: from the beginning, our vision has been to partner with all of the MDM hub software vendors. Our strongest relationships on Day 1 were with Oracle and D&B/Purisma (due to my three years working at D&B, managing its alliance with Oracle). But we’ve developed great working relationships with both Siperian and Initiate Systems as well (for example, Tim O’Sullivan just attended a week-long training class on Siperian). We’ve been very impressed with the caliber and professionalism of both Siperian’s and Initiate’s people. And we’re working hard to further develop our IBM and SAP partnerships as well.
Marketing: We’ve been getting the word out on Hub Solution Designs over the last three months. In February, we launched a completely redesigned web site, and this month has been our best month ever on our corporate blog. We’ve had 4,850+ hits to date, with 1,000+ hits so far in March ’08.
We started publishing a monthly newsletter in February, and currently have almost 2,500 subscribers. If you’d like to subscribe, just visit this page and enter your e-mail address.
DM Review magazine has also been very supportive. My article on “The Politics of Master Data Management & Data Governance” was published as the cover story in the March ’07 issue. Tim O’Sullivan has an article that will be published as the cornerstone of an MDM supplement that will be mailed with their June issue. And I’ll be doing a monthly column for DM Review’s Online Edition starting in May.
Speaking engagements: We’re speaking at the Spring 2008 MDM Summit in San Francisco next week, and in the MDM track of the Oracle Applications Users Group COLLABORATE 08 conference in Denver in mid-April.
The MDM Summit session, which will be presented jointly by myself and our client, Shirlee Collins from ADP Dealer Services, is entitled “Real World Data Governance” (Tuesday, April 1st, 4:00-4:30 pm PDT). We’ll talk about establishing a data governance organization, improving underlying customer data quality, and creating a robust process to enrich customer data in Oracle Customer Hub with D&B information. The ADP Dealer Services story reflects a pragmatic approach, aligning Sales Operations and Finance, and balancing each group’s needs and priorities in managing customer master information.
I’m also speaking at COLLABORATE 08 in Denver, CO, which is the annual conference of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), and which will have a Master Data Management track for the first time. The session, “Best Practices in MDM and Data Governance” (Tuesday, April 15th, 9:45-10:45 am MDT) will present some useful best practices, and will also cover what works and what doesn’t, the importance of a holistic approach, how to get the political aspects right, and how to address more than just the technology elements.
So at this point in our firm’s development, I couldn’t be more excited about the overall MDM market, about our great clients and team members, and the future potential we’ve got for the remainder of this year and beyond. We’re building a great company from the ground up, working hard for our clients, and having a lot of fun in the process.
Master Data Management in the New Year
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There’s a lot going on in the Hub Solution Designs and MDM world since we ticked over to a new year on the calendar:
- We’ve got an article coming out in the March issue of DM Review
- We’ve helped finalize the agenda for the MDM track at the upcoming Oracle Applications User Group Collaborate 2008 conference
- We’re working with a great client in the upper Mid-West
- We’re in the midst of re-designing our web site on a new platform
- We’re pursuing about 14 potential new projects at various stages of the sales process
- We’re involved in a large proposal effort with another consulting firm
So it’s been pretty busy over the past couple of weeks. One way to tell when we’re in “heads down” mode for a time is when the new blog entries start becoming further apart. We’ll try to do better in the new year of writing more short entries, rather than a few, widely spaced long articles.
Hub Solution Designs continues to be very optimistic and positive on the Master Data Management space. Yes, there is some vendor hype going on (when isn’t there?). But underlying that are a large number of real client problems for which MDM is a good way to solve the business issues and drive ROI. Sometimes alone, sometimes in concert with something else like a BI solution or a Risk Management solution.
So even though we are still, in some ways, in the “early adopter” phase of the overall MDM market, it’s starting to heat up very nicely. We continue to get contacted via a variety of different channels by people looking for help with their strategic MDM initiatives. The phone’s not ringing off the wall, but the number of projects we’re getting contacted about is very healthy and it’s consistent with where we were hoping we’d be at this stage of the development of the company.
So we hope your New Year is off to a great start. Please let us know via comments to our posts how your real world MDM initiatives are doing or what your perspectives are on this space.
Last Call for OAUG Papers
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The deadline for submitting a paper to the Collaborate 2008 conference of the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) is 11:59 pm Eastern time TODAY!
Gaurav Arora and myself have both submitted our own papers. Andrew Kapochunas from D&B submitted one that he and I will do together. And Mani Kumar Manda, Jack Dally and I submitted an idea for a panel discussion together.
But today’s the last day to submit a paper idea. If you’ve got some expertise to share on Oracle’s Master Data Management platforms (Oracle Customer Hub, Oracle Product Hub, Hyperion Data Relationship Management), please submit a paper!
Looking forward to seeing a lot of you in New York next week at the CDI-MDM Summit, and at the OAUG Conference in Denver next April.
MDM and the Oracle Applications User Group
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Tonight, Hub Solution Designs joined the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG).
I’ve been an OAUG member at previous companies since 1995, and have always found it a great organization. The idea of having a strong, independent Oracle Applications users group makes a lot of sense.
Oracle’s a great company, and I enjoy the Oracle OpenWorld conference. But having a “by the users, for the users” organization adds a lot of value, and I’ve learned a lot at the OAUG conferences over the years.
Here’s a brief description of the OAUG from http://www.oaug.org/about/index.html:
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) is a global organization that enhances the capabilities of real Oracle users in their day-to-day use and management of the growing family of Oracle Applications. Formed in 1990, the OAUG is one of the software industry’s most successful user groups and speaks with one voice for the family of Oracle Applications users.
The OAUG provides access to a global knowledgebase of solutions to its members, offers unique networking opportunities within a global user community, creating meaningful connections with other users and Oracle Corporation.
The OAUG is committed to enhancing the return on investment on the family of Oracle Applications* for its members through education, professional development and influencing product strategy.
Join the OAUG’s global community of users, managers, executives and third-party solution providers to increase productivity and maximize the return on investment in Oracle Applications.
* The family of Oracle Applications continues to grow. As new brands and products are integrated, the OAUG will work to serve new members through special interest groups and user education opportunities. Most importantly, newly acquired technologies will be welcomed to participate in councils dealing with Oracle’s future product strategies.
I’ve been a member of the OAUG Education Committee for a couple of years now, managing the Master Data Management “area of focus” on that committee.
By the way, if you’re a successful user of (or an expert on) Oracle’s Trading Community Architecture, Customer Data Hub or Siebel Universal Customer Master, please submit a paper by going to www.oaug.org/conferencesandeducation/conferences/2008/collaborate08/.
The Call for Papers has been extended to 11:59 pm Eastern on Fri. November 9th (yes, that’s THIS Friday).
Last year, Customer Data Integration and Master Data Management was included in the Customer Relationship Management track. In 2008, MDM will have its own dedicated track at the annual OAUG conference for the first time.
My vision for MDM and the Oracle Applications User Group is to make the MDM track at the annual OAUG conference a robust source of information from leading practioners and end user companies on Oracle’s Master Data Management products.
Hub Solution Designs is engaging in partnerships with IBM, SAP, Siperian, D&B/Purisma, Initiate Systems and others. We are the leading source of management consulting and systems integration expertise on Master Data Management, and are able to be objective about MDM products through relationships with all of the leading MDM vendors.
But because of our roots in the Oracle community for the past twelve years, I expect to stay involved with Oracle itself and the Oracle Applications User Group for many years to come.
